Grief is Nature’s Way of Keeping Couples Together

They say that long distances often help revive romance in a relationship, as lovers can’t stand the stress of being parted. Now, the notion has been backed by a scientific study, which suggests that grief is nature’s way of keeping couples together.

While working with one of nature’s only monogamous mammals, the prairie vole, as a model for human attachment, Larry Young from the Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia and Oliver Bosch from the University of Regensburg, Germany, examined the role of stress, which is plays a significant role in the grieving process.

In the study, the researchers paired 18 male voles with females and 20 males with males for five days, enough time for male and female to mate and form an enduring attachment to each other. They the separated half of each group from its partner and assessed their “mental state”.

They found that males that were separated from their female partner displayed behaviour reminiscent of depression and anxiety in humans. They spent more time floating rather than swimming when dunked in water and struggled for less time when held upside down by the fall, compared with those voles that had been separated from another male. In vole terms, this means that they showed less will to fight against stressful situations.

The bonded voles also had double the level of the stress hormone corticosterone in their blood, suggesting that CRF, the brain peptide that regulates the stress response, has a role to play in the grieving process. Young said that the effects seen in the study are very different from those of isolation.

Source: TOI

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The Forgiveness of the Father

The story is told in modern American folklore

A young man left home shortly before time of the great economic depression of the 1930s. Tired of his parents, tired of his family tired of rural life on the farm, he wanted excitement, adventure and experience.

So, quarreling with his mother and father, he left home, seeking fame, fortune and the high life in the big cities of America. But the economic depression struck, employment was scarce, and young man found himself living in poverty on the streets.

He now thought only with nostalgia of his home and family, remembering the comfort, care and security they had once provided. But in the years he had been away, he had never contacted his parents, never even written home since his angry departure. And now he was too ashamed and proud to admit to them that he had been wrong, to seek their forgiveness and ask to be taken back into the family home. Read more

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Importance of Marriage

Mention has been made of the great influence on character of the right kind of a home, in childhood and youth. The right kind of a home depends almost entirely on the right kind of a wife or mother.

The old saying, “Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” will never lose its force. “Worse than the man whose selfishness keeps him a bachelor till death, is the young man, who, under an impulse he imagines to be an undying love, marries a girl as poor, weak, and selfish as himself. There have been cases where marriage under such circumstances has aroused the man to effort and made him, particularly if his wife were of the same character, but these are so exceptional as to form no guide for people of average common sense.

Again, there have been men, good men, whose lives measured by the ordinary standards were successful, who never married; but those who hear or read of them, have the feeling that such careers were incomplete.

The most important voluntary act of every man and woman’s life, is marriage, and God has so ordained it. Hence it is an act which should be love-prompted on both sides, and only entered into after the most careful and prayerful deliberation.

It is natural for young people of the opposite sex, who are much thrown together, and so become in a way essential to each other’s happiness, to end by falling in love. It is said that “love is blind,” and the ancients so painted their mythological god, Cupid. It is very certain that the fascination is not dependent on the will; it is a divine, natural impulse, which has for its purpose the continuance of the race.

Here, then, in all its force, we see the influence of association, which has been already treated of. The young man whose associations are of the right kind is sure to be brought into contact with the good daughters of good mothers. With such association, love and marriage should add to life’s success and happiness, provided, always, that the husband’s circumstances warrant him in establishing and maintaining a home. Read more

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